Category: eco-philosophy

Permaculture and Bill Gates I recently read ‘How Soon is Now’ by Daniel Pinchbeck, a true thinker who eschews traditional narratives [http://www.pinchbeck.io/blog/2015/12/21/how-soon-is-now-excerpt-1]. In this book he explains that “The fastest way for change to occur would be for the wealthy…

Imagine my delight when I heard that a musician called ‘Dua Lipa’ had a top-selling chart hit called ‘New Rules’. At last, I thought the young generation are taking their eyes off their mobile phones for a moment. They are…

There are different forms of denial that prevent people from recognising the negative effects of our stories in the Western world, such as the myth of ‘Economic Growth’. Some of these are: I don’t think that these effects are really…

As far as I can, I have opted out of a system – ‘the machine’ – a leviathan that trundles us all towards slavery, environmental degradation and social breakdown. I will simply not be a part of it. I do…

I was talking with an elderly lady recently and I said “I think there should be more anarchy in this country”. She replied “That’s a bad thing isn’t it?” “What do you think it is?” I asked. “I don’t know,…

David Holmgren’s underlying permaculture / philosophy ‘ code to live by’: summarised by David Macleod most recently in ‘Oil vs Money – Battle for Control of the World’ (2009) reduce, reuse, recycle (in that order) grow a garden and eat…

Not enough people are going to change their ways in time to avert environmental disaster of catastrophic proportions. According to Thomas Berry, “the glory of the human has become the devastation of the earth.” The values of humankind are incompatible…

In the 1960’s the mantra was ‘Turn on, Tune in, Drop Out’ a counterculture phrase popularized by Timothy Leary in 1967. The post-war baby boomers discovered pot and acid and embraced cultural change through detaching from prevalent conventions and hierarchies…

This text was presented as a talk at the Sunrise Offgrid Festival August 2012: I offered to give a talk on Buckminster Fuller after Dan, an organiser for the festival, made an invitation on Facebook. Buckminster Fuller has certainly had…

The other day I met someone who thought that all environmentalists are sad. They thought that people who want change can never feel ‘complete’ or ‘happy’ because ‘I can’t be happy until …’ – such and such happens – insert…

‘News values’ make up the criteria that decides the ‘news’ we see in mainstream media. It is very much a part of our Western Democratic way. Our cultural norms have dictated the view of the world we expect and this…

There is a morbid fascination in watching the collapse of ‘the economy’ going on around us. The old guard cling even more tightly to their fictions of ‘growth at any cost’ and those deeply embedded in the world of money…

More people are exploring the potential of living without money as they realise that it is the systems surrounding money itself that may be at the root of many problems in our culture. From the ‘60’s ‘turn on, tune, in…

When you look around, it seems that ‘green’ is just another colour of consumer capitalism. Often it is the more expensive option in a choice to buy goods. Somewhere along the line corporate consumerism has already hi-jacked many of the…

In reality I view my values as a green person as relatively meaningless in the scheme of things. I know that at a global level for everyone of me, a person who makes careful choices about what they consume and…

I want to make some positive suggestions on how to transcend and alleviate the stress of cultural self destruct by enjoying the moment. There are probably infinite ways to transcend a stressful lifestyle but here are some suggestions that I…